Conventional, single-compartment automotive vans or the like are commonly used to carry passengers and to carry material or combinations of the two. To facilitate this use, such vehicles have been fitted with seats that can be repositioned or removed as required to provide the most useful interior configuration.
While these innovations function with a certain degree of efficacy, removing seats requires substantial effort; and the space gained by repositioning seats mounted according to present technology represents but an inefficient compromise in load-carrying capacity. In addition, a danger exists that passengers seated on slidable seats may become sandwiched between them and other seats if the slide locking mechanisms are inadvertently operated while the vehicles in which they are mounted are decelerating.